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Two questions. One about trem and the other about battery and hum cancelling

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Join Date

Jul 2018

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9

Two questions. One about trem and the other about battery and hum cancelling

I've been looking at these Cutlass guitars and they look really nice. I was wondering if it's possible to float the bridge though. I understand it's set up to rest against the body so you can do pedal steel types of bends without the guitar going out of tune but I like to float the bridge so I can wobble it back and forth. I imagine you can but wondering if there's any issues setting it up like that?

Second question. If you simply remove the battery will it be as if the guitar didn't have noise cancelling and buffering? I can see how people would like it and I might in many situations but I'm not really a fan of the sound of noiseless pickups. Maybe it's just psychological thing but all the noiseless pickups I've played sounded a bit sterile to me. Maybe these will be different but curious if making them work like standard single coils is as easy as simply removing the battery.

oh, and I'm going to sneak in a third question. Is the neck profile similar to the Axis line necks? I really liked the neck on this old Axis sport I had

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Jul 2006

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Paris, France

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5,501

Welcome to the forum, Helliger!

Originally Posted by Helliger

I've been looking at these Cutlass guitars and they look really nice. I was wondering if it's possible to float the bridge though. I understand it's set up to rest against the body so you can do pedal steel types of bends without the guitar going out of tune but I like to float the bridge so I can wobble it back and forth. I imagine you can but wondering if there's any issues setting it up like that?

No issues. Loosen trem claw so that back of bridge raises. It's how the Luke guitars are set up in the factory. Also recommended by Jeff Beck and Fender. I've set my silhouette special that way. See photo in my profile (linked in my signature).

Originally Posted by Helliger

Second question. If you simply remove the battery will it be as if the guitar didn't have noise cancelling and buffering? I can see how people would like it and I might in many situations but I'm not really a fan of the sound of noiseless pickups. Maybe it's just psychological thing but all the noiseless pickups I've played sounded a bit sterile to me. Maybe these will be different but curious if making them work like standard single coils is as easy as simply removing the battery.

These are standard single coils. The silent circuit involves a small dummy coil with it's own adjustable preamp to remove the 50/60 cycle hum. The battery also powers the buffer circuit (which means no treble loss when rolling down the volume control and allows longer cable lengths with no degradation in tone). Without the buffer circuit there is no output so you will always need a battery. (With the older Silhouette Special and Albert Lee guitars and anything that had the MM90s pickups, you could still play without battery but they didn;t have a buffer, just the silent circuit).

Originally Posted by Helliger

oh, and I'm going to sneak in a third question. Is the neck profile similar to the Axis line necks? I really liked the neck on this old Axis sport I had

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Jun 2016

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Tennessee

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736

Originally Posted by DrKev

I believe not. Can anyone else chime in here?

I've not played every model, but of the EBMM models I have had the chance to play, the Cutlass reminds me most of the Luke3. Not identical, but both are in the V-shape family. The Cutlass is very easy to get along with.

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9

So just picked up a white Cutlass. Real nifty guitar. Those stainless steel frets are bright. Needed to tweak a few things but real nice after doing that. Bridge floats just fine. Real articulate tone. I have a 57 Custom Shop ash bodied strat which sounds quite a bit different which is good. They contrast each other nicely

The pickup is still a bit noisy though. Especially the bridge pickup. Reading through some things it sounds like there's a trim pot underneath the pickguard. Does anyone know if that can be adjusted without taking the strings off?

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Congrats on your new guitar!

Originally Posted by Helliger

So just picked up a white Cutlass. Real nifty guitar. Those stainless steel frets are bright. Needed to tweak a few things but real nice after doing that. Bridge floats just fine. Real articulate tone. I have a 57 Custom Shop ash bodied strat which sounds quite a bit different which is good. They contrast each other nicely

The pickup is still a bit noisy though. Especially the bridge pickup. Reading through some things it sounds like there's a trim pot underneath the pickguard. Does anyone know if that can be adjusted without taking the strings off?

With the locking tuners you can detune all the way to whatever totally slack is and try to get the pickguard off. May or may not work.

But again, with locking tuners, you can slacken the strings, unlock them and take the off the tuners, take the pickguard off, have a tinker. Then remount the pickguard, and pass the string ends back into the tuners and lock to restring. It helps if the tuner post holes are at ~ 90º to the string line when getting the string end back in. It's a little fiddly but totally possible and I've done it many times.

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With the locking tuners you can detune all the way to whatever totally slack is and try to get the pickguard off. May or may not work.

But again, with locking tuners, you can slacken the strings, unlock them and take the off the tuners, take the pickguard off, have a tinker. Then remount the pickguard, and pass the string ends back into the tuners and lock to restring. It helps if the tuner post holes are at ~ 90º to the string line when getting the string end back in. It's a little fiddly but totally possible and I've done it many times.

Thanks, that's what I gathered after finding a picture someone took of the electronics. I've done the whole unstringing thing with locking tuners so not too hard to do. Kind of tricky getting them back in exactly the same so you don't leave a kink where the string goes in the hole but I usually leave a bit of slack when I tighten them so I should have some wiggle room.

Really I don't mind a bit of hum and would probably leave it as is. My main concern is to just verify it's working correctly since I just got it.

Other than taking off the pickguard and adjusting the trim is there a way to verify it's working? I know when I take the battery out the sound dies so the buffer must be working but I don't know if that also means the hum cancelling is working.

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9

Originally Posted by GWDavis28

You know it doesn’t exist without pictures!!!

Hahahaha Glenn |B)

Very good point. I'll post a picture when I get a chance but it's not the new fancy roasted flame neck so looks similar to most of the white ones you see. They had it on clearance (probably making way for the new roasted neck ones) and I was able to get them to pay the tax (which is like 9.5% or something in the SF bay area).

Have to say the setup on all the Ernie Ball's in the store was really good. Never understood why many companies don't spend time on that. Quite a few people can end up being turned off on a guitar just because it's got a bad setup. You don't want customers having to use their imagination to guess what it would sound and play like with a proper setup. Personally I always use slightly higher action than a lot of people so I set it up how I like it but the setup in the store was how probably the majority of people would like. Could easily get a feel for the guitar without guessing.

In the mean time here's a clip of my other Strat style guitar I was comparing it to. hah. An actual Strat so I guess not "Strat style" but you get the point. This is my actual guitar. Bought it used but found a clip of the store demo'ing it. He's playing it through a pretty bright amp. Has more bottom and mid range in my setup. Greg Koch is a great player.

The two guitars sound very different from each other. My Strat has much more bottom end and you can hear that acoustically as well but the Ernie Ball holds up really well. Especially considering the custom shop is around 3 times the cost. Two very different sounding and playing guitars but when you play them back to back and take into account the cost difference it's easy to see the value in the Ernie Ball. Real well made guitar.